Kia ora, talofa lava, greetings everyone!

Term 4 has started in such a positive manner - it's great to see everyone again.  With the sun shining and the temperatures warming up (apart from today of course), homebases have been out and about embracing the outdoors and to top things off, today is Book Character Day.  It's wonderful to walk around the school and see our students having such fun being dressed as a book character.  Book Week has been a way of promoting our new-look library.   Thanks to a generous donation from the PCG, we have been able to give our much-loved library a complete makeover.    If you have a spare moment, please call into the library to have a look at the space.  It's simply amazing!

As mentioned above, the PCG kindly donated the money to pay for this upgrade, but there was a team of teachers who gave up their own time to design and implement the changes.  Through their creative flair and countless hours designing the space, we have achieved a colourful, comfortable and inclusive library for our children to visit to immerse themselves in literature and more.  Thank you very much to Cara Carser, Tania Soal, Lucy Millar, Rachel Stead, Kate Hawes, Caitlin Buttle and Jo Silvey!

Last week, our Senior Athletics Sports were held and this event showcased our talented young athletes who competed to the best of their ability.    We now have a large team of Clearview athletes who have qualified for the next phase of competition, which will be the Zone Athletics to be held at Brookside Park on Friday 9th November.   To those children who have made it through, I wish you the best of luck.

Tomorrow evening, our Senior Choir will be performing at the Christchurch Music Festival at Horncastle Arena.  We are so proud of our choir and thoroughly enjoy watching and listening to them.  Thanks to Trisa Espiner and Erin Sutherland for all their time and efforts preparing our choir for this big occasion.  We also have five clever students performing in the Representative Choir at the Music Festival.  These students are  Ruth Stevens, Tania McMillan, Grace Fitzgibbon, Olivia Skelton and Chloe Yu.  It's been months of practice for all of these students, I commend them on their commitment and dedication in preparing for this event.

Staffing News:

It's exciting to announce that we have made a few new teaching appointments for 2019.  We welcome Nicole Sutherland (currently at Merrin School),  Jessica Prior (currently at Darfield High School) and Amy McDermott (College Graduate) to the Clearview team next year.  It will be great to have them join our big family.

At the end of next week, we have two of our valued teaching staff finishing up with us to take on a new role at the brand new school in Halswell called Knights Stream School.  Miss Caitlin Buttle and Mrs Tracy Thompson will embark on a new chapter in their career and we thank them for the many years of contributions they have made to our children while teaching here at Clearview.  We will miss them both dearly.

Finally, I wish the Challenge team students and teachers safe and enjoyable week of camp at Wainui next week. I'm sure it will be a fun and challenging few days in the great outdoors.

Nga mihi nui

Rob Rush

Principal / Tumuaki